The Valley of Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37:4-5 "Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord...I will make breath enter you, and YOU WILL COME TO LIFE!"

Here we live day to day in this wonderful world that God has created, surrounded by life and vitality and God's wonderful, breathing, alive, and truly living creation...yet so often we ourselves are only dry bones in it all. Dead, dry bones. We are surrounded by life - everything else lives - but so often we ourselves fail to live.

We watch a river flow continuously, watch how it praises God with its constant babbling and never-ending song; and we can only sit in shame because we don't even spend a single day praising God, yet the living river spends its enternity.

We watch the rocks and the trees glorify God in reverent stillness, content with merely standing still in the presence of God, moved only by his breath in the wind; and we can only stand in humility because we struggle to spend even an hour in reverent stillness an quiet, yet the living rocks and trees spend a lifetime.

We watch a petal soar in a breeze, dancing and twirling in rhythm to a unheard beat, joyously moving and laughing in utter contentment with being God's own creation; and we can only lower our heads because we would rather sit in our own misery, focused only on the hardships, instead of truly knowing how blessed we are if we just started to live, yet the living petals do this as a destiny.

We watch the stars above us sparkle and shine in the darkened sky, reflecting so wonderously the glory of God, illuminating an entire blackness to mirror God's face; and our hearts can only break because we want all the glory for ourselves, and find it a chore for our lives to reflect God to others, yet the living stars spend an entire existance.

The grass, the dirt, the sun, the stars, the moss, the pebbles, the leaves, the rivers, the mountains - everything is so alive, so beautiful, so breathtaking. Everything around us reflects and speaks of God. And we can only long to be like that; like the creation around us that we never think of as being alive, that we look at as dead surroundings. We think we are the only alive creatures. Yet the entire time we are not at all living but rather dead, dry bones.

We need breath. We need breath to enter our own bones, the bones that have become of us, just like breath has been breathed into the luscious and awesome creation around us. We need to become flesh again, we need to be brought to life. We are useless, non-functioning, dry bones. Dry bones with the potential to become so much more. Take us, renew us, wake us up inside, breathe living breath into our fragile brittleness. Make us alive, make us able to stand up on our feet, let us be creation that is living.